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Moving

Am thinking about moving my blog to Wordpress.
1.438 ?! themes to choose from!
And many more advantages to explore.

What has been accomplished this summer

Of the roughly one hundred Lyonese books viewed earlier this year, thirty volumes have traces of use. Screening the books and entering the data into Devonthink resulted in some 80 tags which specify the traces of use. Having finally made the time to find my way into the program, Devonthink is a godsend; it calls itself 'Your Smart Information Assistant' and that it is! Entering the data is a matter of concentration and getting it done. For once no computer-glitches! As I go along the tagging will become more specific, joining some tags together and pulling some apart.

The screenshots below show some of the possiblities within the Devonthink interface.

Above: a selection of annotated pages.

  Below: copious annotations on the endpapers of Petrus Tateretus, Expositio etc. 

(Lugduni: Claudius Davost, ca. 1509) UvA callnumber OTM: OG 6-4.

Above: a selection of manuscript ownership, usually found on paste down, front endpaper or title page.

Below: detail of multiple ownership marks in Joan. Ludoc. Vivaldo, Opus regale. 

Lugduni: Stephanus Guyenard, 1509. UvA call number OTM: 973 F 31.

Manuscript ownership: ’Pertinet fratribus sancte crucis in Embrica Ex donatione magistri Arnoldi Holt Oretur pro eo.’ The words ’fribus sce crucis’ have been crossed out and ’pastori’ written above. The ownership stamps are those of the University of Amsterdam and of Jacob Buyck (1549-1599). Through the years the University of Amsterdam has used different stamps, by which, theoretically, it should be possible to roughly  date the acquisition of the book by the UvA library. Bibliophile pastor Jacob Buyck has been mentioned earlier in this blog. Thirty years after his death a large part of Buyck's books ended up in the Amsterdam 'Stadsbibliotheek'. Former UvA bookhistorian Kees Gnirrep has reconstructed the extraordinary story of the formation and survival of Buyck's library. 

Devonthink will accommodate serendipity.

Juvenile traces of use

 

Johanna Spyri, Heidi. Translated By Helen B. Dole. Illustrated by William Sharp. 

Grosset & Dunlap, Inc., (1945). Illustrated Junior Library. 

Originally published in 1880 in German as Heidis Lehr- und Wanderjahre  

with a sequel in 1881, Heidi kann brauchen, was es gelernt hat. 

All-time favourite and (re)printed in many languages, this copy of Heidi landed in my bookcase when I was young and, like millions of other children, I let my imagination flow reading about Heidi's adventures on a mountain in Switserland. Jackson's observations concerning a student's annotations in an 18th century copy of French grammar are confirmed in the traces of use I left in my copy of Heidi. All notes are on the endpapers, there are no notes in the text. In fact there are no notes having any connection with the story in the book. The squiggles and writings are instructive, of a child learning to read and write her name, words she has just learnt and exercising the basics of artithmetic.

 

It is not uncommon for children to annotate their books in this way. Jackson goes so far as to say that 'a case can be made for their [the childrens annotations] revealing fundamental readers' attitudes in a particularly raw state', annotation being a tool for understanding a text. The childish writing and re-writing of one's name and other words serve the same purpose as the more mature students annotations, translations, paraphrases etc., namely the internalization of a written or printed text.

A quick search in the Lyon imprints of the research corpus reveals that adults also use endpapers of books for writing exercises. Below the penmanship of Franciscus Lutrini in a copy of Albertus Magnus Compendium theologicae veritatis.

 

Albertus Magnus, Compendium theologicae veritatis. N.p., n.d. [Lyon: Guillaume Balsarin, ca. 1487]

UvA call number OTM: Inc 261. Verso of free back endpaper.

Jackson, H.J. ,  Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2001. 'Chapter One. Physical Features'.

My last post was too long ago

How often does one read this or a similar line in a blog?
Almost three blogless months, but they have not been idle. I have found five more Pinto bindings, written an introductory article on researching traces of use and, after uploading a new version of my web-builder, the tracesofuse.eu site of course needed some repairing and maintenance.
Now, ready to roll the blog again, lined up for the next blog entry are juvenile traces of use, found in a copy of Heidi. A textbook case which confirms what H. Jackson writes on the subject in Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books.

Then four, and more to come...

And then there were three.

Serendipity?

It seems serendipity struck on 18th November 2010 when, on opening a box at Special Collections, I found this binding.

A quick search on internet revealed the similarity to the coat of arms of the Pinto family, which also has five crescent moons. However, which family member was the bibliophile? The U.v.A description does not give further details. My query on this blog was answered by an Italian reader who enclosed a link to the Italian/Napoletan Pinto's with a coat of arms with the same five crescents. Meanwhile I was thinking in the direction of the most famous Pinto on the internet, being the 68th Grandmaster of the Sovereign Military Order of Saint John Knights of Malta, the Portuguese Manuel Pinto de Fonseca (1681-1773). And indeed it was long thought the armorial bindings were his (Guichard 1890). It wasn't until last week that further clues regarding the provenance came to me through K.G. According to Storm van Leeuwen the bindings are from the book collection of the Portuguese/Jewish Aaron Joseph de Pinto (1710-1758) from Amsterdam. 
A lucky find which merits my further research. Back to library and archive.
Serendipity with a birthday feeling.

J. Storm van Leeuwen, Dutch Decorated Bookbinding in the Eighteenth Century. 't Goy/Houten: Hes & De Graaf, 2006. 4 vols.

Ongoing

inspiration often comes from the unforeseen. At the present I am motivated from several directions. Firstly being asked to write an exposition on the value of provenance for book history. Secondly by an unforeseen flow of interaction with ex-University of Amsterdam book researcher K.G., who has spent the past thirty+ years, among other things, reassembling the library of the bibliophile 16th century Dutch pastor Jacob Buyck. And last but not least by a reader of this blog, omnivore like myself, who through her work in Rabelais.nl, led me to re-examine an insignificant paper on Samuel Kinser's monograph Rabelais's Carnival, written during my Comparative Literature studies, in which Rabelais is not so much the object of discussion, as is Kinser's research method.

How to trace specific ownership marks and marginalia? How to go about reassembling a long dispersed library? A day of testing several sites with provenance research options left me with ambiguous feelings. It appears that searching online for specific traces of use is not only a time consuming but also a daunting occupation. Unsatisfactory, because provenance records are not always included in descriptions and even then they are not always mentioned in the online entries. I entered the name of the well known bibliophile Marcus Fugger in the C.E.R.L. Thesaurus and got zero result. I find that hard to believe. The thesaurus is linked to a long list of European libraries and zero result would mean none of these libaries have a book formerly owned by Marcus Fugger? Ideally, every book should be checked from front to back for traces of use and a thorough description made of the evidence found, according to standard, searchable entries. A lot of work and not enough librarians to do the job. The ambiguity lies therein that looking for traces of use is a mountain of work and this is a good thing because that mountain covers a wealth of unidentified gems for the lucky finder.  
To end on a positive note, the provenance page of the library of Lyon is a feast for the eye. Multi searchable, very complete descriptions and with photographs of relevant details.

Temporarily finished the ABC with a final entry on 'Why study traces of use?', a subject that merits its own page. 

Continuing the ABC

Have reached 'potential pitfalls' and it is time for reflection. My own pitfall number one might be spending too much time on the ABC. Moving it to the Traces of Use site was much more work than I had counted on as the pictures had to be moved as well. And futhermore regularly going back and forth in the list, correcting, adding and deleting. Time well spent, but also a prevailing feeling that this ABC project will never end. Pitfall number two is the looming alienation of this blog. Do I want that to happen? Back to blog, books, and research next week!

Glitch

Once again a glitch during the uploading of new entries for the ABC, resulting in the loss of material going back to the beginning of February, so have decided to move the ABC to the Traces of Use site.

'Internetless in Burgundy', always makes me think of Eyeless in Gaza. Association of sounds. But, things seem to be getting better, because in all probability this time Burgundy will not be internetless. 10 days of peace and quiet and time to get on with the ABC, if not online, then offline.
As yesterday's comment says: with as much information as possible and RELEVANT. To which I would like to add: with as many photo's as is neccessary to illustrate the material.

How much information should a lemma contain?

The ABC is turning out to be a most time-consuming project. Production is hardly more than a lemma a day also because I'm meanwhile refining the earlier ones. With the purpose of producing a list of lemma's that will enlighten the uninformed without concessions to the reliability of the content.

When, on waking up in the morning, I find myself blind-typing my thoughts, I know I'm spending too much time behind my computer!
Posted an identification question on the C.E.R.L. platform. (Also in: 'Does anyone know'). 

Completed A, B and C, and a provisional restyling of this blog.
After which unfortunately the just completed C and D dissapeared from the blog.
22.12: Rewritten C and D.

Compiling an ABC of traces of use, inspiration toward a first chapter on the status quo of research into marginalia and book ownership. A list of lemma's. The accompanying descriptions will follow.

Back to book business after over a month of activity elsewhere.

Among other things a visit to the Baliem Valley on Indonesian West Papua. I now have an impression of what the Papuans were doing in the 16/17th century as this was probably more or less the same thing they are doing today. Life in the Baliem Valley has hardly evolved since the Stone Age, not even since the valley was discovered in 1938. Of course visiting westerners introduced the obligatory T-shirts and jeans, but these are mere accessories for tribal gear.

A visit to a remote mountain valley without books or signposts, where schoolteacher Simson wears his tribal headset with snazzy sweat shorts and teaches his pupils elementary stuff about the world beyond. A world one day's walk and forty-five minutes by airplane from their village, a world they might never visit. 

A valley where tourists leave marginalia on rocks.